And a chance for change in the Wasatch
comes and goes

The Tri-Canyon area, formed by
Mill Creek Canyon and Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons, is the
center of backcountry skiing in Utah’s Wasatch Mountains. But
Alexis Kelner, co-author of the backcountry ski guide
Wasatch Tours, thinks it’s gone to pot. As
the understated Kelner puts it, the Tri-Canyon area, a 30-minute
drive from Salt Lake City, is no longer a "pleasant" place to ski.

Kelner began skiing in the Wasatch in 1957, back when he
says it felt like only 20 people hiked into the canyons to find
untracked powder snow. Those days are long gone. From 1950 to 2000,
the population of Salt Lake City almost quadrupled, to 1.6 million
people. In 2003, the Wasatch-Cache National Forest was the fifth
most heavily used national forest in the country. Most of the
winter use is concentrated in the Tri-Canyon area, with its
world-class snow, easily accessible backcountry, and four ski
resorts: Alta, Snowbird, Brighton and Solitude.

But the
same qualities that make the area popular with backcountry skiers
make it essential to the heli-skiing company Wasatch Powderbird
Guides, which charges each of its clients $770 a day for helicopter
lifts to the top of the slopes. The company’s use of
avalanche-control explosives, the drone of its rotors, and the
fields of tracked-up snow left behind cause wildlife enthusiasts,
and many backcountry skiers, to complain that the backcountry is
being sacrificed to commercial recreation.

Heli-skiers
make up only 2 percent of total backcountry users, but they have a
much larger impact than anyone else, according to the environmental
group Save Our Canyons. The group has led a decades-long fight to
preserve the silence and untracked powder in the central Wasatch.
The conflict has forced the Forest Service to get creative with
dividing up access to the backcountry.

In its 31 years of
operation, Wasatch Powderbird Guides has been slowly hemmed in. The
1984 Utah Wilderness Act put large chunks of the lower Tri-Canyon
off-limits. In 1999, the Forest Service created a half-mile no-fly
zone around occupied golden eagle nests, and closed the Tri-Canyon
area to heli-skiing on Sundays and Mondays.

But some
skiers and environmentalists say these restrictions have only
increased conflict. According to a Forest Service study, the
Sunday-Monday closure caused an 18 percent increase in
Powderbird’s Saturday use of the Tri-Canyon area. "This is
Utah," says Rusty Dassing, who has worked as a Powderbird guide for
20 years. "People are more likely to recreate on Saturdays."

So when the company’s five-year permit came up for
renewal last November, Powderbird asked the Forest Service to
replace the fixed closure with an annual cap of 10 to 15 weekend
days. This would reduce backcountry conflict, according to the
company, because it would remove Powderbird’s incentive to
use the Tri-Canyon area every Saturday. Instead, weekend use would
be spread out over the season.

The Forest Service
initially considered adopting Powderbird’s suggestions, but
many locals, who liked having predictable heli-free days, objected.
In the new five-year permit, the Forest Service decided to retain
many of the old conditions, including the Sunday-Monday closure. In
an attempt to reduce Saturday congestion, however, the new permit
allows Powderbird to exchange three Saturdays for three Mondays
each season. Lisa Smith, executive director of Save Our Canyons,
says the permit "isn’t as bad as it could have been." But she
says her group is going to challenge the permit with an
administrative appeal, on the grounds that it doesn’t do
enough to protect golden eagles.

Dassing, meanwhile, says
the 10- to 15-day cap "would have significantly reduced our impact
on others. It would have given us the flexibility to avoid other
people."

If the Forest Service’s decision is
upheld, it will be another five years before the issue can be
revisited.

Loren Kroenke, district ranger for the Salt
Lake Ranger District, calls the conflict "symptomatic of
what’s going on across the West, although a little more
compressed." The Census Bureau predicts the population of the Salt
Lake region to balloon from 1.6 to 2.7 million by the year 2020.

Meanwhile, longtime backcountry skier Kelner says
he’s given up on the Tri-Canyon area. Now, he skis in the
southern Wasatch, or farther east, in the Uinta Mountains. And
Wasatch Powderbird Guides has expanded overseas, offering
heli-skiing in places like Greenland and New Zealand.